A non-perturbative study of massive gauge theories

TL;DR

This paper explores a non-perturbative lattice formulation of SU(2) massive gauge theories, providing evidence for a scaling region with light vector and scalar particles, and discusses their low-energy effective description.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative lattice model of SU(2) massive gauge theories with a conserved global symmetry and investigates its low-energy spectrum.

Findings

Evidence for a scaling region with light vector and scalar particles

Indications that the low-energy dynamics can be described by a massive gauge theory

Numerical simulation results supporting the existence of a continuum limit

Abstract

We consider a non-perturbative formulation of an SU(2) massive gauge theory on a space-time lattice, which is also a discretised gauged non-linear chiral model. The lattice model is shown to have an exactly conserved global SU(2) symmetry. If a scaling region for the lattice model exists and the lightest degrees of freedom are spin one vector particles with the same quantum numbers as the conserved current, we argue that the most general effective theory describing their low-energy dynamics must be a massive gauge theory. We present results of a exploratory numerical simulation of the model and find indications for the presence of a scaling region where both a triplet vector and a scalar remain light.